First Lady Without a Portfolio (or a Ring) Seeks Her Own Path

Twice married and twice divorced, she covered French politics as a journalist for more than 20 years with no inkling that she would one day become France’s first lady, certainly not when she fell for François Hollande, a jovial, unglamorous leftist politician who hardly seemed like presidential material.

“I almost want to laugh when I think of it,” Ms. Trierweiler said in a telephone interview.

But Mr. Hollande was elected on May 6 and was sworn in on Tuesday, and now Ms. Trierweiler — whom he calls “the love of my life” — is concerned with preserving her independence while supporting her partner.

“In France, a first lady has no status, and therefore she isn’t supposed to do anything else,” Ms. Trierweiler said. “My perception of life is not to ask François Hollande, who isn’t the father of my children, to support me financially.”

Last week she told the newspaper Le Figaro that she would have to “think” about her future role. Elle magazine and other media outlets have quoted her as saying she would continue to work as a journalist.

Mr. Hollande and Ms. Trierweiler are the first unmarried couple to occupy the presidential Élysée Palace together, following close on the heels of the new president of Germany, Joachim Gauck, whose live-in companion is also a journalist. That these arrangements were no bar to office is a sign of how European attitudes about families have changed.

But they do raise some concerns about protocol — how to travel together to places like Saudi Arabia, for instance, where unmarried cohabitation is not accepted. In both France and Germany, some have suggested that the presidential couples ought to marry now, but in neither case does that seem likely to happen.

Ms. Trierweiler “is scared of being the wife of a president and is looking for models,” said Laurent Binet, who followed the couple closely during the election campaign for a book he is writing. “She sees herself as an active woman.”

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Valérie Trierweiler and France’s new president, François Hollande, are the first unwed couple to occupy the Élysée Palace.Credit
Antoine Antoniol/Getty Images

Born in 1965 to a disabled father who lost a leg in a mine explosion in 1944 and a mother who worked as a cashier at an ice rink, Ms. Trierweiler grew up modestly with five siblings in a housing project in Angers, in western France. She studied political science at the Sorbonne and then took a job as a reporter on a weekly review, Profession Politique, where she was known for hard work; she later moved to the well-known magazine Paris Match.

“Valérie is a very interesting mix of strength, pride and fragility,” said Philippe Labro, vice president of the TV channel Direct 8. “She cares for her own identity and loves her job.”

Mr. Labro hired Ms. Trierweiler for the channel in 2005, shortly after she and Mr. Hollande became involved. “I didn’t know at all that Ms. Trierweiler was with Mr. Hollande when I hired her,” Mr. Labro said. Once he knew, he said, “we agreed with the director of the channel that it wouldn’t be that which would prevent her from working.” Mr. Hollande made the relationship publicly known in 2010.

Ms. Trierweiler stopped covering politics for Paris Match in 2005 but continued her political programs on Direct 8, something that is not widely regarded in France as posing a potential conflict of interest.

“We need rules, they exist, but hypocrisy reigns,” she told Le Journal du Dimanche in 2010. “All journalists have opinions, they all vote, they all have sympathy, friendships. But they’re not asked to justify them. We believe in their integrity, we trust them and we’re right to do so.”

Sharp-featured, elegant and telegenic, Ms. Trierweiler began to attract more attention over the last year, as she was seen applauding and kissing Mr. Hollande at campaign meetings — not to mention her occasionally caustic comments on Twitter.

When Paris Match put her picture on its cover in March, Ms. Trierweiler wrote on Twitter: “What a shock to discover myself on the cover page of my own magazine,” and added, “Bravo to Paris Match for its sexism.”

She seemed happy, if a bit shocked, on the stage last Sunday in the town of Tulle when her partner delivered his victory speech.

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Valérie Trierweiler describes herself as an ordinary woman who struggled to make her professional and private lives compatible.Credit
Pool photo by Christophe Ena

While Mr. Hollande is clearly his own man, Ms. Trierweiler’s influence is palpable. On Friday, she confirmed to Le Figaro that she had asked Julien Dray, a controversial Socialist leader, to leave the victory celebration for Mr. Hollande and his team last Sunday. Between the two rounds of the presidential vote, Mr. Dray drew criticism for inviting Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former Socialist front-runner, to his birthday party at an unsavory bar.

Ms. Trierweiler met Mr. Hollande in 1988, and the two became friends in 1997, when she was covering the Socialist Party for Paris Match and was married to a colleague, Denis Trierweiler.

“François Hollande and I have been accomplices right from the start,” Ms. Trierweiler said. “But there was something more than only friendship.” They shared a passion for politics and would talk for hours on the phone, she was quoted as saying in a recent book about French first ladies.

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Mr. Hollande, for his part, was a party leader and legislator in a relationship with Ségolène Royal, who was then a cabinet minister under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Ms. Royal later ran for the presidency in 2007, losing to the man Mr. Hollande defeated this year, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Ms. Trierweiler, who has three teenage sons and tries to keep them out of the public eye, described herself in the interview as an ordinary woman who struggled to make her professional and private lives compatible.

“I’ve shared the fate of many working mothers, I felt guilty like them,” Ms. Trierweiler said. “I took Wednesdays off to see my children and make them crepes.” She said she turned down a posting as a foreign correspondent for Paris Match because “I wanted to stay with them.”

When Ms. Royal announced in 2006 that she would run for president, she and Mr. Hollande had been together for almost 30 years and had four children. An article in Le Point described them as an “odd” couple and said “their driving force is their differences.” Mr. Hollande’s affair with Ms. Trierweiler had already begun, though he would not acknowledge it publicly for another four years.

Though far from traditional, Mr. Hollande and Ms. Trierweiler are a loving couple, people who know them say. The question now is how Ms. Trierweiler can reinvent the role of first lady to fit comfortably.

“I haven’t been raised to serve a husband,” she said. “I built my entire life on the idea of independence.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 16, 2012, on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: First Lady Without a Portfolio (Or a Ring) Seeks Her Own Path. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe